Merlin Series 5: Episode 8 The Hollow Queen.

The Sarum

 24/11/2012.

Bleugh … !

He says: in something of a tired tone of voice.

Do you mind me making a confession … ?

Guinevere

This is going to be one of those two-part posts.   Mostly where my DVD player managed to FAIL to record tonight’s episode of Merlin

— The Hollow Queen, so you know — and it’s taken me a while to figure out that was due to either a bad blank disc …

Or me programming the blessed thing wrong.

Morgana, Trapped

On the other hand, as things are getting late … ?

Trapped, again

Dægal

 I’m going to hit the sack.

JUST so I can have a good night’s sleep, before telling you about the actually episode.

Arthur and Company

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25/11/2012.

Right … !

I’m now thoroughly rested: I’ve disconnected the (soon to be gone) dead washing machine and cleaned a drain.

And now I’m back to telling you about last night’s episode of Merlin.

Just so you know, though … ?   Just so you know, for some reason, my DVD recorder failed to record last nights episode for some reason.

Thankfully, I managed to use my TV’s ability to record things to record the episode to a USB flash drive: the TV saves such things as what’s called an MPEG2 based transport-stream.

Then used vlc to re-encode the result into what’s called a programme stream: this has the file extension .mpg on my version of Mac OS X.

Once THAT was done … I’ve used MPEG Streamclip 1.9.2 to separate that file into an audio and video file: which I can reintegrate as an m4v file with iMovie.

But enough with the technical details, let’s move onto the episode, shall we?

~~~~~

Last night’s episode saw Merlin — Colin Morgan — talked into helping the mysterious Dægal: a young man who claims to be both a druid, and to have a seriously ill younger sister.

What Merlin doesn’t realise … ?

Is that Dægal has been persuaded — much against his better nature — to lie to Merlin.

By Morgana: keen to get someone she sees as an irritant out of her way.

With all THIS taking place … ?

All this taking place just as Camelot is expecting a visit from the formidable Sarum of Amatar: a king who both hates sorcery, has a habit of assassinating people … and putting his subjects on spikes …

All this … and, as it turns out, he had managed to a certain sorceress …

~~~~~

Now, I’ll happily admit to being a touch frustrated last night’s episode didn’t record to disc as I thought it would: so that sort of left me feeling a touch frustrated at the episode.

However, that doesn’t blind me to the episodes basic soundness.

It was a nicely put together one that helps take forward this season’s story.

And one that leaves me wanting to see more.

Let’s hope next week’s episode is just as good.